Corsair takes fan testing seriously

I have been wandering around the Bay area for the last several days and stopped in to see some of our favorite hardware and technology companies. We saw a lot of really interesting things that we can't quite discuss yet, but this machine we found in the Corsair testing labs was kind of interesting. Have you ever wondered how fans get all those ratings like CFMs, dBAs and speed curves?

Meet the LongWin LW-9266 Fan Performance Measurement Apparatus. Not something from Aperture Science as you might guess, this device lets Corsair test new fan options for their heatsinks, cases and H-series liquid coolers to find those that are the quietest, the most efficient and the provide the best pressure results for cooling particular heatsinks, etc.

The idea is simple enough - connect a fan (or a fan behind a heatsink) to the end of the LW-9266 and turn on the machine, set some variables and let it go. Air is pushed by the fan into the blue chamber up to and another fan blower moves air in the same direction to equalize pressure, thus it can tell how much air is actually being moved.

The whole process is quite a bit more complicated that I am making it out to be of course - I just got the crash course. Interestingly, this Delta fan they were showing off for me was so loud, it droned out the rest of the testing contraption completely. Air speed = high, noise = high. I didn't need a machine for that.

Here is a sample result from a previous fan test that shows some performance results. Other than the cool factor here, there isn't much to report, but it is good to see Corsair making investments in actually TESTING stuff they are selling to consumers rather than taking OEMs word on specifications, etc.